Welcome to the Norfolk Island Museum's blog. We are lucky to be located in the most beautiful part of a stunning island in the South Pacific. We are a little island, but our history and stories are great - from Polynesian and convict settlements to the home of the Bounty mutineers. Hopefully you'll enjoy our stories.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Next year the Norfolk Island Museum
celebrates its 25th Anniversary. During the last few months we have
been thinking about a range of things that we can do to celebrate this achievement,
including displaying objects that will have special significance and meaning to
the Norfolk Island community. We are very
pleased to announce that a loan has been made with the Museum of Tropical
Queensland for a quite special object that will
be displayed throughout 2013.

The object is a Tahitian food pounder or
pestle, or, as it was known in Tahiti, a penu.
It was recovered from the wreck site of the Pandora
and is thought to have been confiscated from one of the ‘other’ mutineers on
the Bounty who did not sail on to Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian and the rest of
the mutineers. The men it has been associated with are mutineers Peter Heywood and
George Stewart who were taken into custody in Tahiti.

L-R: David Buffett, Lisa Richards, Phillip Smith

Heywood and Stewart along with another fourteen
mutineers were captured in Tahiti after Captain Edward had been sent by the
British Admiralty to find the Bounty
‘pirates’ and bring them home for trial and punishment.The
Pandora arrived at Tahiti
on 23 March 1791. Within twenty-four hours eight of the mutineers had given
themselves up leaving another six men at large (another two had been killed
earlier in a feud). Armed parties were sent out to hunt them down and in a
matter of days they were found.

On board the Pandora the mutineers were placed under
arrest and shut in a specially built wooden box on the deck, measuring 11 by 18
feet (3.3 x 5.4 metres) and known as Pandora’s Box. This was unusually harsh
treatment of prisoners at sea but Captain Edwards had a reputation amongst
naval officers for brutality.

On the return voyage
to England the Pandora was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. Thirty four men drowned including
four mutineers, one of whom was unable to escape from the wooden box. George
Stewart was amongst those that drowned.

The survivors of the
shipwreck, including ten mutineers, finally reached Timor
in open boats following the route taken by Bligh in the longboats. When they
arrived back in England
the captives were imprisoned to await trial for mutiny. Four of the mutineers were pardoned following
written evidence by Bligh that they only remained on board the Bounty because there was no more room in
the longboat. The remaining six were sentenced to death. Peter Haywood and
William Morrison were pardoned. William Musprat was released on a technicality
but three mutineers Thomas Ellison, Thomas Burkitt and John Millwood were
hanged in October 1792.

The simple and beautiful pounder that will
be on display in the Pier Store was used to mash, amongst other things taro,
which is cooked and then fermented to become a starchy food staple called poi.
It would also have been used to pound breadfruit and bananas.

Phillip Smith from the Museum of Tropical
Queensland very kindly brought the pounder to Norfolk with him when he travelled here to
work on the HMS Sirius collection
re-housing project. Prior to departing last weekend he presented it to the
Norfolk Island Museum in the presence of the Chief Minister, and Minister for
the Museum, Mr David Buffett.

We are very thankful to the Museum of Tropical Queensland for their support in
helping us secure this loan. It is not yet on display as the finishing touches
to a display case take place however it will be within the next few weeks and
will be found on the ground floor of the Pier Store Museum. As a result of the removal of
the HMS Sirius collection from the
Pier Store, both floors of the building now display the Bounty story and artefacts together with the stories of Pitcairn
Island and Norfolk Island. It is a museum that
celebrates the history, stories and culture of the people of Norfolk
Island. We hope that many people will enjoy viewing the pounder
with its special connection to Norfolk’s
foremothers and fathers.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

It has been a big few weeks at the museum. On
Thursday 8th November the amazing team of Phillip Smith, Franklin Randall, Caine Henderson,
Winton Stephens, Brent Jones, Pumpkin and Brett Berganin took the Sirius anchor, carronades and other
artefacts from the Pier Store to their new home in the former Protestant
Chapel. This was no easy task for the anchor in
particular. Not only did they have to take the 1.7 ton anchor out through the
gantry doors in the Pier Store (that are shorter than the average door and
thinner than the width of the head of the anchor) they also then had to
manoeuvre it in through the compound side door, attach it to a wooden stock and
leave it free standing in the middle of the room! Hopefully some of the
pictures will reveal the level of skill and ingenuity required to successfully
carry this out.

Our sincere thanks to Franklin Randall for
doing it all again! and providing his expert knowledge to the whole process.
Caine Henderson brought his ‘Dial a Digger’ machinery and team who worked
together for the entire day meeting every challenge without a hitch. What
amazing Norfolk men!

We have been so lucky to secure the
services of Phillip Smith from the Museum of Tropical Queensland who has so
much experience with this type of work. Prior to the move of the major
artefacts, Phillip worked with Brent Jones putting up the 5 metre long replica
fibre-glass hull. Fitting the difficult bow sprit and figurehead were no
problem for these two! Phillip and Brent will continue working on this museum
and the Pier Store through next week as all the interpretation panels are hung
and new displays installed in the Pier Store. As always we had our amazing
volunteer Sue Brian doing anything and everything and more that was asked of
her.

This exciting re-housing of the HMS Sirius collection is of course only
possible due to funding from a grant through the Commonwealth Your Community Heritage Program and the
Norfolk Island Government. We have a long way still to go before the new museum
will open its doors – but the major and most difficult task of moving those
precious artefacts has been successfully achieved.

The photo's really capture the action, skill and incredible accomplishment of the 'move team'.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The move of the HMS Sirius collection continues. We had a great day yesterday as the anchor stock and cabinets were delivered to the museum and the replica hull had the bowsprit attached. Our 'full-time' team of Phillip Smith from the Museum of Tropical Queensland, Brent Jones, Sue Brian, Janelle Blucher and Lisa Richards were on hand - and also Franklin Randall from KAVHA and Caine Henderson from Dial a Digger! Caine's team will be also be managing the move of the major items such as the anchor and carronades on Thursday.

Monday, November 5, 2012

All of the work of the last five months is coming to a head this week and next as the HMS Sirius collection is moved into the Protestant Chapel. This “HMS Sirius Collection – Re-housing Project”
has been made possible with funding through the Commonwealth’s Your Community Heritage Program and the
Norfolk Island Government. It is a very large and exciting project and one that
will importantly result in the Nationally Significant HMS Sirius collection being housed in vastly improved environmental
conditions. As the flagship of the First Fleet, the Sirius is Australia’s
most important shipwreck and as a result of this project Norfolk
Island will have a dedicated museum to display her story and
remains.

A lot of work has been undertaken to get us
to this point. The building has been modified to include a workroom/office,
painted and had the floors sanded and re-sealed. New interpretation panels have
been designed, written, printed and mounted onto backing panels. Cabinets have
been custom made and the replica hull that stood in the old museum has been
cleaned up ready to be installed. The anchor stock has been cleaned and oiled
ready to stand once again attached to the anchor. A touch-screen with a database
on all of the nearly 1,400 people of the First Fleet is underway as is a First
Fleet Wall that will eventually contain individually inscribed wooden disks for
each of the 1,400.

Not only that, but new displays have also
been developed to fill the ground floor of the Pier Store which will be left
empty when the Sirius collection is
moved out. The Pier Store will be closed for a period towards the end of next
week and will then re-open with a focus on the stories of the mutiny on the Bounty, Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island from 1856.

Phillip Smith from the Museum of Tropical
Queensland (MTQ) has arrived to work with our local men on the move. Phillip
was last here in 2010 to build a fibreglass replica Bounty cannon used while we completed conservation work on the
original. At the MTQ he is a Display Officer with responsibility for the
mounting of displays and moving objects throughout the museum. He is also a
specialist in dinosaur creations! He recently made a life size replica dinosaur
that moved by remote control to the delight of children visiting the museum’s
dinosaur exhibition. We are excited to welcome Phillip back to the island and
to work on this important project. Our sincere thanks to the MTQ for releasing
him from his work and allowing him to come – and also to his wife Claudia and
small son Lennox for letting us take him away from home for the fortnight!